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Cow's Body Current from Stray Voltage |
| Q.
What is stray voltage, and how do cows perceive it? |
| A.
Much like stray cats, stray voltages are non-harmful small voltages that turn up unexpectedly but not unpredictably, and that can be related to a source, quite often as a residual effect. The term stray voltage, that is generic and could apply to any voltage experience, has for the past two decades come to describe the voltages that a dairy cow might experience in its living environment, principally the milking parlor; voltages that are in the earth and are related to the commercial operation of electric power systems.
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Small as these voltages are, they can rise above the cow's perception level when the conditions are right (exposure) and enough current flows through the cow's body. The voltage per se is not harmful; it is when this voltage closes a loop through the cow's body that a perception may result and hence there is a concern for harm. Contact with the earth, or hardware connected to the earth, has to be made through a minimum of two points for a stray voltage experience.
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Stray voltage experience of concern without multipoint contact is a far-out theory, much like having tornados without winds. Effects at a distance, without direct conduction, fall into EMF, another much debated subject.
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